Baked goods are stored and transported in plastic trays, which also display the goods on store shelves. Bakery products by their nature are soft products so the trays must be stackable to provide a protected interior space intermediate stacked trays and avoid crushing the bakery products. Many trays are stackable at multiple levels to accommodate baked goods of different heights or shapes. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,383,611, 4,759,451, and 5,035,326 each disclose baskets or trays for bakery products that are stackable on like trays at three different levels. In addition, the bakery trays are designed to be stacked with like empty trays to nest at a minimum stacking height in order to save space for transportation and storage.
Generally, these multi-level stacking trays have a floor disposed within an outer rectangular wall including two end walls and two side walls. A plurality of support means in the form of legs, feet or lugs are spaced apart along an exterior surface of the side walls to support the tray on other trays in various stacked and/or nested levels. Recesses are spaced apart along an interior surface of the side walls. The support legs and the recesses are positioned on the side walls so the support legs engage the recesses and support the tray in a stacked position. These recesses and the like have ledges or platforms positioned at multiple levels. The support legs may be stationed over the ledges or platforms on the different levels. Unfortunately, these tray designs are awkward to handle when stacking the trays. The trays may require a precise alignment of the support feet or legs within the corresponding recesses and on the respective stacking ledge or platform.
Other tray designs may provide an easier stacking configuration to avoid the above referenced problem to multi-level stacking trays. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,960,207, issued to Tabler, discloses a bakery tray that permits blind stacking of the trays. The Tabler bakery tray utilizes different proportioned feet disposed along side walls that correspond to recesses along an interior surface of the side walls. The trays nest when aligned in a first position whereby the feet of a top tray correspond to recesses in a bottom tray. When the upper tray is oriented 180 degrees with respect to the bottom tray, the support feet are vertically misaligned with the recesses, and the trays stack at a high position. In addition, the upper tray is slidable on the bottom tray by means of the support feet engaging a channel extending along the side wall. However, this tray requires some precision by mating the feet with the channel.